Chloë Sevigny: 'I’m a celebrity, get me out of Manchester'

Chloë Sevigny, the actress, model and fashion designer, talks about her
harrowing five months living in Manchester as a pre-op transsexual contract
killer.

Sevigny described Manchester as "one of the grimmest places that I’d ever been in my entire life."Photo: Startraks Photo / Rex Features

By Tim Walker

7:30AM GMT 15 Feb 2012

Chloë Sevigny did nothing to offend the good burghers of Manchester during the five months that she resided in their city last year to film the television series Hit and Miss, in which she was somewhat colourfully cast as a pre-op transsexual contract killer.

Now safely back in her apartment in Manhattan, the 37-year-old actress, model and fashion designer can, however, contain herself no longer about what she clearly regarded as a harrowing ordeal.

“It was very hard being in Manchester,” confesses the sensitive American Psycho and Boys Don’t Cry star. “It was one of the grimmest places that I’d ever been in my entire life, and I was there for so long. I hardly had any visitors. I was so alone. And it rained every single day I was there.”

The former girlfriend of, among others, Jarvis Cocker and the comedian Paul Kaye, adds she discovered that Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, one of her favourite bands, was due to play in the city the day after she had her return flight to New York booked.

She was adamant, however, that she was not going to stay so much as a second longer than she had to in the city she had grown to hate. “I was like, 'I’ve gotta get the hell out of here. I’m not staying one more night just to hear them,’ so I left.”

Mandrake fancies that her words are likely to come as scant comfort to the stragglers at the BBC who have still to make the trip to MediaCityUK, the corporation’s gleaming new outpost on the banks of Manchester Ship Canal.